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Friday, 30 August 2013

I think Soulemama is having a break from her blog for a few days so here’s my ‘moment’ still, without a link to hers today…

{this moment}

A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

If you're inspired to do the same, leave a link to your 'moment' in the comments for all to find and see.

I know this is supposed to be 'no words' but I just have to say this week that this is actually Maria's photo. The 3 bigger ones and I went in for a swim, with Maria paddling just on the water's edge, with the camera, as chief photographer, and she took this one.

Also, if you're thinking you need to stock up on any fabric this weekend (and who doesn't think that?!), then you might want to have a look at 'Bug Fabric', if you 'like' their Facebook page (here), you'll find they've got a 25% off everything sale just this weekend. They're in America, so watch out for postage and customs if you're ordering from the UK, but they have an amazingly wide range of fabric and, even without the 25% off, I find they're usually quite a bit cheaper than UK shops.

It's the last weekend before school, sadly, starts again later next week - where did the Summer go? - and I'm hoping we're going to go off on a family adventure tomorrow, so I'm not going to post anything. Have a great weekend everyone and I'll be back again on Monday, Sally.

Thursday, 29 August 2013

This wasn't what I was planning to write about today, I was going to show you around my garden a little bit, but last night I had the urge to start something new! I think it must have been me saying yesterday that my works in progress pile was going down, clearly I had to remedy that immediately!

There's a little girl I want to make a quilt for, and I've been wondering for a week or so what to make her. When I have a project in mind but haven't decided what exactly it's going to be, I normally find that different possibilities seem to go round and round my head last thing at night. I knew I wanted to make something quite flowery and yesterday evening I sat down and had a little browse through my 'Patchwork' Board on Pinterest to see if anything popped out at me. This popped out at me:

They're from a blog called fiberliscious and this is how they ended up:

I don't think I'll use the posies in the same way on this kind of background, but isn't this a gorgeous quilt?

I love projects that make use of really small scraps of fabrics, I have quite a lot of scraps! Especially flowery scraps perfect for this. So I did a quick bit of gathering and cutting last night. And this morning I got up early to make a proper start. The link from the picture didn't really go into a lot of detail about how these flowers were constructed, so I've no idea if I went about it the best way, but this is what I did:

I cut out a hexagon - just a rough, freehand one, and sewed it down on to a piece of scrap fabric.

Then I sewed on a small strip, right sides together, along one edge of the hexagon.

And then ironed that strip back flat...

This covered up the raw edge on that side of the hexagon. And then I sewed another strip on, again right sides together. With this one I folded over a narrow hem on the short side to avoid a raw edge there, but I found as I built it up further I hardly ever needed to do this again.

Then ironed it back over...

And trimmed it...

And it just carried on like this, all the way round - right sides together and then ironed over, covering any raw edges as I went...

So here it is with one layer built up all around the original hexagon...

And then I started a second layer in just the same way...

And carried on until it was the size I wanted. Here it is...

I sewed all the way round the outer edges and then cut it out.

﻿

I'm planning on sewing them down on to my quilt with a tight zigzag stitch to cover those outer raw edges. The children don't think they look anything like flowers though, I'm hoping they will when they're on stalks with a few leaves. I think I'll need seven more 'flowers', so six more to go...

Wednesday, 28 August 2013

The top is all made from recycled wools. Originally it started off with just the central panel - I intended it to be a flower picture for my bedroom, but very quickly I realised the colours weren't going to go in there with my other flower pictures. So I began to turn it into a quilt, adding each border at a time. It's backed with a bright orange cheesecloth type of fabric, I think it was probably an old tablecloth. I quilted some swirly lines on the central panel, not sure how clearly you'll see them here:

And I did the purple binding with a contrasting orange colour in a sort of 'piping' effect, I've seen this done on other quilts and thought it would suit the design on this one. I found a tutorial for it here. It's not as complicated as you might think and it's all machine sewn - a big bonus if you hate slip stitching binding on the backing! Here's a closer look at it - although it still needs a good iron really!

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You can see some of the swirly lines on the backing here too.

﻿﻿﻿﻿I'm not sure what the plan is for this quilt. I do like it, but it's not really my kind of thing particularly, I love bright quilts but I think the colours on this one are too dramatic for me personally. And I made it sort of accidentally, since I'd originally started it as a picture, so it wasn't made as a present with anyone in mind. But, whatever I decide to do with it, it's always good to get a quilt finished. My works in progress pile is gradually reducing!

Tuesday, 27 August 2013

I've got some more flower pictures for you today from around the bedroom - but I've really struggled with them and trying to avoid any glare or refections, even in evening light. I'm afraid I could really do with getting better at this photography business, but here they are anyway.

They're pictures I've collected over years of thrifting. I think the very first one I found might still be my favourite:

It's a beautiful embroidery, with so much detail. There's even a little ladybird on one of the leaves. Most of the pictures are textile art of some kind. This large, central picture is a tapestry;

There's another smaller tapestry and another embroidery in this grouping:

And the other grouping is made up of all textiles:

I made the small pansy picture, just with wool felt and emboidery. The large picture here is very simple, it's just a piece of fabric in the frame with a few of the details and outlines picked out with embroidery.

There are a couple of oil paintings, I think my favourite is this one:

And then a few more small ones...

And a lonely, little plate above a door...

Oh, and another small one I made on the window sill!

And how could I forget this one that Venetia made for me...

So you see, I like Flower Pictures! At certain times, for example when we're decorating cakes, I do sometimes - gently! - try to explain to the children the principle of 'less is more' - and, particularly with cake decorating, they just don't get it! I am a little worried I need to remember my 'less is more' principle with my flower pictures! But, the trouble is, I keep seeing lovely flower pictures sitting unwanted at Charity Shops! It justs seems a crime that somebody has put in so much time and thought and love, so much of their own special creativity, into making them and they're sitting there unwanted. So I have to bring them home with me! I've got several more recent acquisitions that I haven't hung up yet, I think there's one more patch of wall I could just about get away with filling, but after that I'm going to be really stuck!

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You can just about see a quilt under these - more flowers on it! It's one of my few bought quilts - second hand of course - but it goes perfectly in my room.

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I didn't realise it yesterday when I started off on the Flower Pictures, but I think there may be a bit of a flower theme going on this week. I'm hoping I might get time tonight to finish off my wool flower quilt from last week

Monday, 26 August 2013

I've had this flower picture finished for ages now and keep forgetting about it when it comes to deciding what to put in the blog - possibly I keep forgetting because I was super organised and put it straight up on the wall once it was finished, very unlike me! Anyway, here it is now:

I cut out most of the flowers from various bits of vintage, flowery fabric I had and appliqued them. A couple of them aren't directly from the fabric pattern, I just cut out individual petal shapes with a circle in the centre and then sewed them all on individually - sorry, not sure that makes sense without photos, but I started this long before the blog so I haven't got any photos along the way I'm afraid. There's lots of embellishment from embroidery, buttons and beads too. You might be able to see a bit better in a close up:

The larger purple flower and the blue 'stripey' flower are ones that I 'created' from cutting out the shapes I wanted for petals and centre, all the others are just flowers I cut directly from the pattern of the fabric.

I think the blue 'stripey' flower, above, is my favourite.

I made this picture to put on my bedroom wall. My bedroom has a bit of a 'flower' theme throughout, and a while back I found this embroidery in a charity shop and decided I wanted some more hoops to go with it:

I put together 5 hoops altogether (odd numbers are always good!) to go on the section above our wardrobes﻿. Here they are in place:

It was really difficult to get a good picture I'm afraid, but here are the other 3 close up:

Just a lovely piece of vintage fabric I put in the hoop.

Another piece of fabric - this one came from a little top I had when I was tiny!

This last one is a beautiful, embroidered napkin I found and cut to hoop size.

﻿They look lovely altogether up on the wall. I was going to show you some of the other flower pictures from the bedroom too, but I just can't photograph them in the gorgeous sunshine we have today. Even with the curtains drawn it's still too bright and I keep getting lots of glare on them. So I'll try again tonight in the evening and hopefully show you tomorrow.

And apart from photography difficulties we have lovely friends coming round very shortly, for a walk down to the river, swim, and back for a BBQ. It's going to be a good day - and I must stop writing this and quickly go and clean the toilets before they get here!

Saturday, 24 August 2013

I decided last night what I'm going to make as my next mini quilt. It's going to be a peacock. I've been thinking about making a big peacock quilt for some time, I love the colours. I even have a 'peacocks' board on Pinterest where I've been collecting images that may, or may not, help when I get round to it! (here if you like peacocks too)
So I decided it might be good to try a little peacock quilt first and see how it goes. For the mini quilt I thought, from a size point of view, maybe a side on peacock might be sensible. I liked this image (from my Pinterest board)

But was a bit worried something like this might need to be longer than I want. This one's good too:

But maybe a little too simplistic? (Possibly I will regret saying this later!) So I thought maybe something along these lines?

Obviously this would have to be an applique quilt. I have a gorgeous bit of wool, from an old jumper, that's just calling out to be used in a peacock design somehow, I have used bits of it very effectively in several other things too, but it's really saying 'peacock' to me at the moment:

It's got a sparkly, metallic thread running through it.

So I decided it's going to be a wool applique mini quilt - and wool is so lovely to applique as well. I started late last night and have got quite a lot cut out:

It's going to go on a piece of linen, I think it's going to look good.

Just the sewing to do! Back Monday, Sally.

PS I don't know any good peacock quotes to add to it - anybody out there know any good peacock sayings?